Posted
by
BeauHDon Thursday March 16, 2017 @05:20PM
from the whoopsie-daisy dept.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from Ars Technica: AT&T this week acknowledged that DirecTV has been charging the wrong regional sports fees to some customers and is now issuing bill credits to those who paid more because of the mistake. "We have identified a small percentage of customers who are receiving some inaccurate bills for regional sports network fees," an AT&T spokesperson told Ars yesterday. "We are working as quickly as possible to notify those customers and issue credits. We apologize for the error." AT&T bought DirecTV, the nation's largest satellite TV provider with about 21 million customers, in 2015. The mistake affects bills going back to late January. Customers will not have to do anything to get the credit, as it will be issued automatically. The billing problem came to light last week when Consumerist published a report detailing how the regional sports network fees vary by ZIP code in ways that simply didn't make sense. It wouldn't be surprising to see different fees in different metro areas and states, since different local sports networks and teams are broadcast in different areas. But there were numerous cases in which people in adjacent ZIP codes were charged very different amounts to watch the same exact networks and teams. Some customers were charged no sports fee, while others were charged amounts of $2.47, $5.83, or $7.29 a month.

Pretty much this. It's funny how all the "billing errors" the big corporations are making are always in their favor. I haven't seen a bank error in my favor since I drew that Community Chest card in my childhood but I've seen plenty of errors in the favor of companies I do business with. If DirecTV would just quote a price and say "this is the price you are paying" then they wouldn't have these problems, but since it's in their interest to keep the bill overcomplicated (easier to make "billing errors" t

easy data entry messup when there are Changes to ZIP codes that can happen monthly / and when it's time to change the prices for the new year.

Also if say a zip code was linked to the wrong zone but it's price was the same as right zone that it should be part of then if may of been that way for some time but when the 1 zone get's a new price and the other right does not this error can show up.

It seems likely on the order of tomorrow's sunrise, that if honest mistakes were made charging by zip code, there would naturally be some folks who were undercharged as well.

When contacted by Ars, AT&T did not say exactly how many customers were affected. We've also asked the company whether any customers weren't charged enough as a result of the same error and will provide an update if we get one.

Wouldn't you benefit by getting out in front of this and stating that some folks were charged too little if that was actually the case?

Why the fuck do I have to spend a penny on "regional sports"? That's not like docking all users for a 911 fee so that emergency services can be funded. I don't watch sports, don't care about sports and resent that I'm being forced to subsidize any aspect of it.

Yet another reason to totally cut the cord on cable/satellite/whoever forces you to eat bundled services. I'll pay for what I want to consume and nothing more, thank you.